


An Unreliable Narrator's Apology

by kiah



Category: Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (2013), f scott fitzgerald - Fandom
Genre: Fix-It, M/M, South of France Gays, f scott fitzgerald, pissing off old writers by making everything gay, what if Nick wrote more
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-21
Updated: 2016-05-21
Packaged: 2018-06-09 20:38:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6922528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kiah/pseuds/kiah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The second and last published work of Mr. Nick Carraway pertaining to one Jay Gatsby.<br/>Many people consider Mr. Carraway to be an unreliable narrator. To these individuals, here is his true account of what happened that summer, after one Myrtle Wilson's death.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Unreliable Narrator's Apology

Two men that I cared about deeply gave me conflicting ideas about the past. My father told me you could not run from it. Jay Gatsby told me you could repeat it. Consequently, both were wrong. I fled from the West, an engagement announcement in a paper I never wished to read. I fled and found myself in the East...West Egg to be ironically precise. I found myself next to the melodramatic, intricate set of the life that was Jay Gatsby. He found himself stuck, mourning and lusting over a green light, this light no more than a symbol of my cousin, his love. It’s funny how these things work out.  
The summer passed wildly, through parties and dinners, and the love of one Jordan Baker, a woman who had a knack for lying a careless driving. All of us were careless that summer, particularly in driving. My cousin, Daisy Buchanan, in a fit of panic, struck her husband’s lover unknowingly, killing her in Gatsby’s yellow car.  


It was this action that led to Gatsby’s death, to me writing my first work. Some people have criticized me for being an unreliable narrator, and I must confess that they are correct. I did return West and could not look Tom Buchanan in the eye, knowing how many lives he had carelessly ruined. I did not, however, mourn James Gatz, more commonly known as Jay Gatsby.  


At first sight of him, I was entranced. Blond hair, gelled in the style of the time, reflected in the Coney Island-esque lights of his home. There was an air of mystery of him, one that I would soon breakthrough. The girls were ever so drawn to him, but not to him, to this mystery. My introduction to Gatsby was one that not many would’ve watched. I can look back on it, see it unfold from overhead. I can see myself, my idiotical self, completely taken in by his smile, a real genuine smile. His smile was so infectious, I found myself still smiling hours later, alone in my bedroom, remembering his smile, a smile just for me.  
I had friends before, I had known people in the intimately, as in friendship, before. I had been Atlas, the secrets of others becoming a world on my shoulders. None of these relationships could hold a candle to my friendship, it was a friendship after all, with Jay Gatsby. A friendship after all that left me with a stab of pain in my side, as I watched my cousin and Jay fall deeply into an affair, and watched their world fall rapidly apart.  
Jay had me keep his secret, but now the world must know. I must save my reputation, become a reliable narrator. That hot night, the night their world fell apart, the night of Myrtle’s death, Daisy did not flash any lights for Gatsby to save her. I knew she would not. She and Tom, they shared some sort of bond that I am not sure anyone will ever understand. They always interacted as if they shared a secret that you didn’t know, and they wanted to make sure that you knew you did not know.  


Gatsby waited in the bushes on East Egg. He waited for Daisy to come to him at last. I waited for him to come to his senses. He fell asleep, eventually, though he would never admit it, and I took him home.  
With all of his former staff dismissed, and Wolfshiem's men hardly capable of being domestic, the mansion was locked with no one to let us in. I brought my tired friend to my own humble home, laid him on my humble bed, and sighed. In the dark, in the cotton sheets that summer demanded, I saw real beauty. It wasn’t in a girl like Jordan, who always kept her chin in the air, like she was questioning who gave you the right to talk to her. It wasn’t in Daisy, who was winsome and enthralling, but no more safe to love than to kiss a black widow spider. It was in Jay Gatsby, exhausted, blond hair mussed and splayed against my pillow, his blue eyes shut, breathing softly, three buttons of his shirt undone.  
I felt a jab of pain inside me, longing, love, whatever you’d like to call it. I splashed some water on my face, cursing myself for sinning, though I wasn’t remotely religious. These feelings, in those days, were quite frowned upon. I resigned myself to the parlor couch, and tossed and turned until the sun rose. I found myself in the kitchen, aimlessly making eggs. I had always been a useless cook, but today was Sunday, the only day my Hungarian housekeeper took off, and I was grateful for that. I stumbled up the stairs, half hoping he would be gone so I wouldn’t have to explain.  
“Old sport?” I heard his voice, filled with sleep as I reached the top of the stairs.  
“I’m here.” I entered the room. He was sitting in my bed, clothing disheveled. I gulped at the scene that seemed to have occurred. “I brought you breakfast… I can’t promise how it tastes.”  


He took the plate with a small smile, glancing out my window, through the trees. I knew he was trying to see Daisy’s house. I looked at my feet, bare and tan from the walks on the beach I had taken with him. “She never flashed her light for you, Jay. I tried to bring you to your house, but it was locked up.”  
He gracefully accepted my explanation, looking at the plate, “Thank you, old sport.” Slowly, he ate. He ate with the speed of a broken heart.  
My own heart wrenched in my chest. I sat on the edge of my bed, “I’m so--”  
“You don’t need to apologise. It was the musings of a desperate man.”  
For a second, I did not know if he was speaking about myself, him, or Tom. “Please don’t go back over there,” I put a gentle hand over his, causing him to drop his fork, “It’s over now, Gats-- Jay.”  


He could not do much but stare at my hand, and I felt as if we should cry together. I pulled away, feeling like an intruder in my own room. Jay put the plate on my bedside table. “Thank you for your hospitality, Nick.” He spoke after a moment of silence. He pushed himself up, and left my house. Through the window, I saw him walk into his own yard. A presentiment of dread filled the air, and I considered calling in sick to work. My train was to leave in twelve minutes anyway.  
That day was a day full of waiting. I had found his shoes, white leather that was polished so forcibly it could’ve blinded someone. I waited for the right time to take them over, to apologise yet again. I waited until I heard the shots.  
There were two, and even from the distance, they were deafening. My mind was immediately filled with the worst possible scenarios. Those moments are almostly completely a blur, as I raced from my house. I saw Wilson first, already dead with the gun still in his mouth. I retched, adding my vomit to his mess of brains against the hedges. I heard shouting from the butler, near the pool.  
There wasn’t much blood; the bullet was lodged in Gatsby’s shoulder, but he was underwater. I couldn’t stop myself. I dived in, the first time that the chlorinated water had touched my skin this entire dreadful summer. I pulled him up, pulled him out of the water. The butler was gone, phoning for a doctor. Somehow, he sputtered to life, coughing up blood and water. I had conducted CPR, I am sure, which I learned in my army days. His eyes were bluer than the pool water, and wide with fear.  


“I was to have a party.” He stated frankly.  


“They’re a rotten crowd,” I told him, my voice breaking at the idea he was to die, cradling his upper body in my arms, trying to ease the pain of his breathing, “You’re worth the whole lot.”  


He closed his eyes, nodding politely, before breaking into a radiant, wincing smile. It was then, when my narration became unreliable.  
Wolfersheim sent a doctor who specialized in criminal men, as our Gatsby was. Gatsby, as we all knew him, wished to die, to be born again as a new, different man. Like a phoenix, rising from the ashes, James Fitzgerald was born.  
Knowing that the man lived did not help ease my disappointment of the funeral. The lavish parties filled with people left the home vacant, no one to warm the funeral shroud of a man whose dream had died. I felt a stab in my heart as his father told me of James Gatz. He had paid for a house for his parents to live in. He had always dreamed for more than his poor family’s life. He was a good man.  
I went West, and could not tolerate it. America was tainted for me. People forgot the wonder that was Gatsby, and his tragic death. They did not forget the never-ending scandal of whomever Tom Buchanan was embarrassing his family by consorting with. Sick to my stomach, I headed to New York to catch a boat, to meet an old friend.  


“I thought you’d stand me up.” A voice told me, smooth as velvet.  
I bit my lip, turning to see a man in a muted pastel suit. It wasn’t as brilliant as the suits he had once worn, but it complimented his eyes. “I could never reject an invitation to France.” I responded.  


The first of the five days on the streamliner were silent days of watching the sea and twiddling our thumbs. I watched him, a man rising on the third day, the Christ of my own private religion.  


“Nick,” He snapped me out of my observations, “You didn’t answer my question.”  


“Hmm?” The sun was warm on my back. We were alone on an upper deck. The wind blew our loose hair aimlessly.  


“You never told me what you would do when we were there. You just said you would pursue your dream.”  


This was true. I did not have the courage to tell James Fitzgerald that he was my dream. “I suppose what most ex-patriots do when they get to Paris, write.”  


“I not as talented as you when it comes to writing.”  


I sat up, looking at his tanned torso, lounged on the chair beside me. He was art in my eyes, “You could always paint.” He considered the suggestion for a moment. His laughter, rich like the Chapel of my boarding school’s campus, filled the air.  


“What would I paint?” He shaded his eyes from the brilliant sun behind me. I shrugged, standing to lean against the rail, searching for the European coastline. I felt the warmth of sun kissed skin against my arm, “Could I paint you, Nick?”  
It was my turn to laugh, though my laugh was not as beautiful, more like the hyena they had in the Central Park Zoo, “I suppose, but who would ever buy a portrait of me?”  


James looked at me, “I would hang it above a fireplace.”  


“Do they have fire places in France?” I asked with a chuckle. He shrugged. “I would miss the sea if we were to settle in Paris, I think.” I said after a long silence.  


“If I am to paint, I think we best stay in the south of France.” James decided.  


And so we did. At first, we looked for homes near each other, but nothing was quite what we wanted. So we settled. We found a powder blue cottage that was surrounded by lilacs that overlooked the sea. By this time I was 35 and unmarried, but I pursued none of the beautiful French women that had tried to catch my eye, and James gave no attention to those who tried to catch his.  


The bees were particularly bad in the first August we settled at our cottage. I was trying to trim the overgrowth of lilac bushes, and was stung. James coaxed the stinger out of me with tweezers, and I hissed into a cup of whiskey.  


“Now we have matching scars!” He joked, showing me where Wilson’s bullet had pierced him. I rolled my eyes, peering down at the swollen red area of my shoulder. “Oh come on Nick, do I have to kiss it to make it better?”  


The notion turned my cheeks hot. I began to stutter, telling him it wasn’t necessary. I wasn’t going to waste years of friendship on something as stupid as the bee sting of an adult man.  


James disregarded my protests, and gently pressed a kiss to my sting. I winced, the pressure irritating it. “Hmm. Perhaps ice instead.” He suggested, turning away to fetch some.  


I tried to calm my heart from beating so quickly. I tried to tell myself that it was just one of his games. But as he faced me again, I couldn’t help myself, and my pent up longing for Jay Gatsby, and now James Fitzgerald was released.  


I pressed my lips into his, as gentle as his kiss had been, but his cheerful reply of kissing me back only made me want more. A thought in my head made me chuckle. What would Daisy Buchanan think of her lovely rose of a cousin kissing Jay Gatsby in a cottage in the South of France?  
Before he bedded me, he told me that he loved me. He told me that the war was hard for many men, as I knew, and that he had done this before. I told him that I hadn’t been intimate with anyone, not even women. Now I knew why, I had been waiting for the Great Gatsby.  


I love James as much as I loved him the summer that the world saw him dead, if not more. Our modest living, though rough for him at first, has transformed him into an extravagant painter, whose best work is me, asleep, what he calls “Serene and Beautiful, old sport.”  


It seems so queer for him to call me ‘Old Sport’ now. It seems so queer to be telling the world of my love for a man they think dead, to reveal my ‘sins’ to the world. The truth is that I don’t think it’s sinful. I think it is beautiful...Serene and Beautiful.

**Author's Note:**

> This is for Christine Sydelko. Nick and Jay were gay and in love and also Gatsby never died. It's true, I read the book twice. Also thanks to my english teacher for having me read this and making me more pretentious because I enjoyed annotating Great Gatsby... I hope you never read this Kate. I would also like to thank F. Scott Fitzgerald for being dead so he can't beat me up for bastardizing his work.


End file.
